What is a subject pronoun?
A subject pronoun is a word that replaces the Subject in a Sentence. We use them to avoid Repeating the Subject. For example: Mary is tall. She is pretty. We used “she” to replace Mary.
The 12 Subject Pronouns in Spanish are:
- Yo
- Yú
- Él/Ella/Usted
- Nosotros/Nosotras
- Vosotros/Vosotras
- Ellos/Ellas/Ustedes
Spanish Subject Pronouns video lesson
Subject pronouns Tips and tricks
Nosotros (as) = we. Remember that a “we” can also be accomplished by saying someone else + I. In other words, you can say: We are tall. or, you can say: Mary and I are tall. In Spanish we can do the same. We can say: Nosotras somos altas. or, Mary y yo somos altas.
Remember: Anyone else + yo = nosotros(as)
Ustedes (Uds): You are talking TO a group of people.
Ellos/Ellas: You are talking ABOUT a group of people. (An easy way to remember is thinking that you are talking behind their back (in a figurative way).
Anyone else + Tú = Uds. Think about it this way. I could say: Mary, Johnny and you are tall. or, I could say You (plural) are tall.
As we continue learning Spanish, I would like to encourage you to memorize the subject pronouns in the specific order shown here.
Why? Well, we will be learning how to conjugate verbs and conjugation is based off of subject pronouns. It is on your best interest to learn them in this order as they are organized by singular/plural. We will use them in this order as we begin to conjugate.
Deep Dive: Subject Pronouns in Spanish
Subject pronouns are the first step in learning Spanish grammar and sentence structure. It is super important to learn them as we will be using them throughout our journey. There are a lot of topics that we will cover later on that will be based off of the subject pronouns.
You use subject pronouns in English and now we will be using them in Spanish. Keep in mind that the subject pronouns in Spanish are a bit different than they are in English. In Spanish we have to make sure we use the correct gender of the person we are talking about.
Subject pronouns are used to replace the subject so we don’t have to repeat their name over and over. You already do this in English, therefore, let’s work on transferring that knowledge into Spanish.
For example: In the sentence, Mary is tall., you could replace Mary with the subject pronoun “she” and instead say: She is tall. As long as we know we are talking about Mary, we know that that “she” is referring to Mary. We are going to do the same thing in Spanish. Let’s look at that same sentence. Mary es alta (alta = tall). We could replace Mary with “ella” and they say: Ella es alta.
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